Tech from the Heart:
5 Ways Leaders Can Build Stronger Teams
Written by Judith BreenDirector of Strategic Partnerships, Insight Canada
Judith has achieved significant success over her 26 years in IT, in channel sales, organizational development, relationship management, partnership building and community relations. Judith has served in her current role for more than five years as Insight Canada’s director of strategic partnerships. Recently having earned a mini-MBA at McGill University, Judith also participates in Insight’s mentorship program, lending mentees her experience, all the while strengthening her team by leading by example.
Diversity encompasses more than just the differences you see on the surface. On top of readily apparent distinctions each of your teammates possess, business leaders must consider the nuances of how individual workers think and react to specific situations. It just so happens things like age, gender and race do factor in. After all, building an effective team comes down to embracing diverse perspectives and then finding the commonalities to ensure everyone works well together.
While consensus is important, it can only be reached once all perspectives have been heard and discussed. Differing points of view are healthy in a corporate setting — at Insight, we like to call them “messy” meetings, which lead to beautiful outcomes for our clients.
Here are five ways that have helped me in that regard, both as Insight Canada’s director of strategic partnerships and earlier in my career — no matter the role, diversity consistently contributes to team success:
Part of being a leader is acknowledging you don’t have all the answers. Giving your teammates the opportunity to challenge you in a messy meeting is good. It allows them to offer honest feedback and constructively challenge each other’s ideas. Without a candid setting, you may get stuck in groupthink, inhibit creativity and fail to resolve a problem that might otherwise be easily fixed. “Yes” people only get you so far. Open minds break ceilings.
As long as you, the leader, create clarity on the overarching goal, you will see healthy discussions on solutions, priorities and risks. Productive meetings aren’t meant to be quick and easy. Everyone may not be in complete consensus by the end. But everyone must agree that, once a decision is made, the team will go forward in the same direction.
Make it clear at the start of a messy meeting that it’s your teammates’ one opportunity to be heard and encourage them to take advantage. Obviously, there will be occasions when there is no consensus. In those instances, you as a leader must decide how to proceed. But the best choices are made when everyone has had a voice in the discussion. This requires you to …
Productive meetings aren’t meant to be quick and easy.
Speaking of “messy” meetings, on the partner management team I oversee, we often hold planning sessions. These come around every half-year or so and each lasts several hours. Sometimes I’ll have managers and teammates lead discussions in small groups so that everyone feels more comfortable speaking their minds. Then, we reconvene to present our ideas to the full team.
In between the big decision-making meetings, our everyday discussions galvanize our team’s overall cohesiveness. This is where consistency in creating a safe space for candor occurs. Some by nature are louder. Some are quieter. It’s important to hear every voice, not just the loudest ones. By reaching out on a daily basis to encourage each of your teammates to share their opinions on even mundane concerns, everyone learns to find their voice.
When the time comes for the truly team-shaping big meetings, the level of comfort has been raised over time to encourage the greatest feedback when it counts the most.
The necessity for a safe place obviously extends to the concept of inclusivity. Emphasizing and maintaining an open-door policy is critical, just like taking immediate action if discrimination or intimidation in any form is reported. It’s what leads to a safe place in which teammates can feel comfortable to communicate anything to you — and each other — without fear of misunderstanding or undue judgment.
It’s easy to say a company should hire a certain number of women, people of different ethnicities, religions or sexual orientation, and there is definitely something to that.
In an organization like Insight, with expertise that spans the broadest business challenges and deep partnerships with the biggest IT players in the world, our teams need to represent our clients’ needs. Since our clients are very diverse in purpose, we need teammates who can speak to how they might think. If everyone thinks the same, we’re only limiting our market reach.
A problem we run into sometimes is avoiding having the same type of people applying for a job. But with a mandate to hire a diverse workforce, a hiring manager may be tempted to go with the most diverse candidate rather than pick the best person who applied.
This is the wrong approach. So, start with the candidates you’re reaching.
For example, I’m on Microsoft Canada Partner Women’s Council. One of the issues we discuss is how women and men apply for jobs differently. According to the LinkedIn Gender Insights Report, women apply for 20% fewer jobs based on the notion they feel they need to meet all of a position’s qualifications (whereas men feel comfortable applying despite meeting a fraction of them). The kicker is, when women do apply, they get hired more often according to the same report. Perhaps it’s a result of women best meeting all the criteria (after all, they otherwise wouldn’t have felt comfortable applying in the first place).
While organizations want to make it perfectly clear which qualities they’re looking for in a candidate, they’re arguably limiting themselves in the end with a smaller candidate pool. They need to cast a wider net by making their postings less prescriptive and writing job postings that encourage more people to apply. Diversity becomes less a primary focus, but it’s still naturally achieved as the doors open for more people. Remember, there’s always the option of filtering out wrong fits later on, particularly during the interview process.
To build a team that embraces diversity, you need to hire team players. I am a big fan of author Patrick Lencioni and leverage his book The Ideal Team Player when hiring new teammates. He highlights which questions to ask to help identify key qualities like being humble, ambitious and smart. These naturally align well with Insight’s values of Hunger, Heart and Harmony. So, you look for those specific qualities during the hiring process, especially when interviewing candidates.
Do this by asking the right questions, which may not be the typical ones you’d expect and for which it is very hard to prepare.
For example, “What do your friends and family think is the most annoying thing about you?” To further drive home the importance of being humble, “Tell me about someone you know in your field who has had more success than you and that you admire.”
Hunger comes into play by following up with something as simple as, “What is the hardest you’ve worked on something in your life?” You can maybe go a different route and ask at what age they started working. One candidate once told me they and their sibling sold fruit to tourists when they were five years old. That shows a great deal of interpersonal skills, too.
You’re also testing their ability to think on their feet by asking these questions. If they answer effectively, it shows a lot in terms of how much they might be able to react to new situations. First and foremost, you can’t lose sight of their actual answers and how they fit the makeup of your team.
Building strong teams is obviously a passion of mine. In some ways, it’s like a puzzle. You’re always looking for what’s missing on your team when hiring someone new, and which added skills your team needs to make it more well-rounded. And, of course, you want to hire teammates who are passionate about what they do and demonstrate a desire and capacity to contribute to the team’s success.
If everyone thought the same way, it would be soooo easy. There wouldn’t be any debates, but there also wouldn’t be any creativity or innovation. There would be no one pushing them and each other to improve, which starts at the top.
As a leader, you set the direction your team is headed. It’s your job to create clarity by owning the culture and defining a clear vision for your team. So, if diversity is important to you, it will be important to everyone.
It’s your job to create clarity... defining a clear vision for your team. So, if diversity is important to you, it will be important to everyone.
Setting the tone by promoting and enforcing inclusive policies? Ensuring the right people make up your team? That’s all you.
Opening up to ideas other than your own by listening to those very same teammates? You as well.
You may be empowering your team with opportunities to speak up. But in the end, you’re also empowering yourself with a more effective team. One that is made stronger through diversity of thought, skills and personality — diversity in general.
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